If you’ve been searching for a greener television, help might soon be at hand. The consumer electronics industry is listening to research from a September 2008 study:

Going Green: An Examination of the Green Trend and What it Means to Consumers and the CE (consumer electronics) Industry. This study finds that 89 percent of households want their next television to be more energy efficient.

“Consumers are now beginning to associate terms like recycling and energy efficiency with consumer electronics products,” said Tim Herbert, the Consumer Electronic Association’s senior director of market research. According to the study, price and features continue to be the primary purchase drivers for CE products, but green attributes will increasingly be a factor. In fact, 53 percent of consumers say they would be willing to pay some type of premium for televisions with green attributes.

Effectively communicating the green attributes of CE products continues to be an obstacle for manufacturers in particular. Though the study indicates high consumer awareness of logos like EPA’s ENERGY STAR®, the absence of a single indicator for other “green” attributes leads to consumer confusion. The study finds consumers desire an easy way to determine if a product meets environmental standards, such as logos and descriptions printed on the product packaging.

“With 74 percent of consumers saying that companies should do more to protect the environment, it’s critical that CE manufacturers and retailers clearly communicate with customers regarding the environmentally-friendly products and programs offered by the industry,” notes Parker Brugge, CEA’s vice president of environmental affairs and industry sustainability.

If the manufacturers are listening, we should soon be able to walk into our local electronics store and easily identify a hi-definition, flat screen, surround sound, environmentally friendly television right away. But- will it be on sale?

According to a survey conducted by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), about 15 million televisions will be replaced by 2010 because over-the-air reception will no longer be available beginning next year. The study also says that about 95% of those TVs will be sold, recycled or donated. Forty-eight percent of households plan to keep their televisions and use a digital converter.

Consumers are far more likely to recycle, reuse, give away or sell analog TVs than throw them away,” says CEA’s Senior Director of Market Research Tim Herbert. “While some have speculated that millions of TVs would enter the waste stream, this new study suggests that is not the case.”

Recycling is an increasingly common way to dispose of unused TVs. In fact, according to the survey, consumers report recycling nearly 30 percent more TVs in 2007 than in 2005. That trend also extends to other CE categories. While only three percent more devices were removed from homes in 2007, twenty-seven percent more devices were recycled. At the same time, the number of CE products that end up in the trash is decreasing-down 7 percent from two years earlier.

“We see a very positive trend developing when it comes to consumer electronics (CE) afterlife,” notes Herbert. “A full 87 percent of consumers say it’s important to recycle their CE devices. Not only is traditional recycling an increasingly popular option for consumers, but the vast majority of consumers report that they give away or sell unused devices, which is also a form of recycling.”

Among those consumers that did report throwing away a TV in the last year, 42 percent reported that they weren’t aware of recycling programs for electronics.

“It’s terrific to see more consumers being more thoughtful and proactive about the responsible disposal of their electronics devices,” added Herbert. “However, there is still much to be done in terms of educating consumers about the options for electronics recycling.”

CEA’s consumer website, www.myGreenElectronics.org educates consumers about the responsible use, reuse and recycling of electronics and also includes a zip-code searchable database of electronics recyclers.

Consumer electronics recycling will be a point of discussion at CEA’s upcoming Washington Forum, to be held April 2-3, 2008 at the JW Marriott in Washington, D.C. In the Thursday 2-3 p.m. session Analog Sets and Recycling, a panel of experts will discuss consumer behavior and what the CE industry is doing to educate consumers about the importance of recycling TVs. For registration information, please visit www.ce.org/Events/default.asp.

Americans are not backing up their digital photos, music, documents or other types of files, according to a new study released today by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA)®. Results of the study, Amassing Digital Fortunes: A Digital Storage Study, show that nearly one in three consumers don’t see the need to back up their files, while nearly a quarter (22 percent) say they aren’t backing up files because it’s too time consuming. “The issue appears to be a combination of lack of awareness of storage options and ease of use,” says CEA’s Director of Market Research, Tim Herbert. “Generally, consumers don’t know how to back up their data and if they do, they’re failing to back up data because they claim it takes too much time.”

The average American adult has 1,800 digital files, totaling 310 billion digital files nationwide. With another 1,060 being added per user in 2008, the total number is expected to hit just under 500 billion by the end of the year.

“The sheer amount of data being amassed every day creates tremendous opportunities for the digital storage market,” says Herbert.

Photos (85 percent) and music (67 percent) comprise the largest percentage of stored files, making them more common than productivity files, like home office documents (59 percent), which ranked third.

Research results show that consumers are satisfied with their storage options. Eight out of 10 respondents reported using their home computer as their primary long-term storage option. For back-up, over three quarters of people surveyed (77 percent) burn their files onto a CD or DVD. Over a quarter (29 percent) of those surveyed copy their files onto more than one device, such as having a file on a computer and a portable MP3 player.

CEA offers several tips for consumers to keep digital files safe:

If you are saving content onto a CD, DVD, USB Flash Drive or other removable device, keep an extra copy off-site, like an office. This ensures your contents safety in case your home is damaged by events such as a fire, flood or earthquake.
Use an online backup service to protect your content from disasters and/or hardware failures.
Scan and clean your backup drives. Viruses can spread to removable drives and other network connections, damaging your music and photos.
Regularly defragment your hard disk drive. This will ensure your computer is running faster for longer with less wear and tear.
Establish a regular back-up schedule. Many external hard-drives come with software that can assist in the back-up process and help maintain a consistent schedule to ensure data gets saved even if you forget to.
For more tips on how to protect and archive digital content, visit www.DigitalTips.org.

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